Their kids have a plan. The town has opinions. Trouble the dog has impeccable timing.
Marlee Finn
Contemporary Romance
Published 2/2/2026
381 pages
After thirty years apart, they’re finally ready for their second chance—if their meddling children and the entire town of Maple Grove don’t puch them over the edge first.
Emma Sinclair returns to her small North Carolina hometown with nothing but designer luggage, a bruised ego, and a half-dead rescue dog named Trouble. The last person she expects to see? Ethan Cooper, her high school sweetheart and the man whose heart she broke three decades ago.
Ethan has spent the last three years sleepwalking through life since his wife’s passing, wearing the same flannel shirts and eating the same sandwich for lunch. Then Emma walks into his veterinary clinic, and suddenly he remembers what it feels like to be alive.
Their adult children have other plans. Noah and Lily launch “Operation Second Chance,” conspiring to reunite their parents through fake dating profiles, strategic pet emergencies, and one spectacularly awkward blind date.
As Emma and Ethan navigate rehearsals for the town’s Valentine’s play, a charity bachelor auction, and the world’s most intrusive small-town gossip network (led by Frank’s viral newsletter), they rediscover the love they thought they’d lost forever.
But Emma’s manipulative ex-husband has other ideas, old wounds run deep, and choosing love means choosing to stay—something Emma has never been good at.